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A drive maker possibly could make a BD-rom ONLY drive with no DRM support

Originally Posted by dee.

From what I gather, in bluray, the DRM is embedded in the bluray disc players themselves - in the actual hardware.

This is Defective by Design on a whole new level.

So what we need is devices that can read blu-ray discs and bypass that whole DRM thingy. Or a way to modify existing bluray devices into such. So that we can just read the raw data on a blu-ray and rip it. Until that happens, bluray is pointless.

Such a drive would make no attempt to support commercial Blu-ray movie discs, it would be for data storage and backup only. The savings would be not having to pay for keys and licensing, by not supporting pressed discs at all. part of their DRM is this: pressed discs won't play UNLESS encrpted, recordable unless not. This blocks both bitwise copies onto recordable discs, and is intended to keep "pirates" from being able to use cheap pressed discs to distribute pre-cracked content. Unfortunately that is also a millstone around the necks of independant filmakers.

I don't know if any patents on the overall format come bundled with the DRM and encryption keys, however. Theoretically, such a drive could be used for a bitwise read of an encrypted disk, to be followed by a brute-force decryption (if computers get strong enough) or other crack. Perhaps in software those older "revoked" keys would work again for product released originally with those keys, for instance.

Make no mistake about it: I consider Hollywood the enemy and boycott their products. When they started suing people for filesharing I swore an oath never to buy another prerecorded CD or DVD. I would so love to see an irreversable crack of Blu-ray, or just enough people torrenting the product to kill off the makers. That will in turn open the way for independant, unsigned musicians and filmakers, often as good as anything Hollywood has, to use the same distribution system and actually be heard and seen. They would be an obvious user for unlicensed, writable blu-ray discs, if someone can make them stable over time. Issues with recordable disc stablity over time as well as no "plain" unlicensed players have driven the lib-ray project.

Here's my advice on distributing free video content: My 20 minute year-end video is just under 1GB compressed at 6000K using H264 for 1080p 30 fps. If your intended recipients have either blu-ray players or computers equipped with ordinary DVD drives, you could get a 2 or 3 hour movie onto AVCHD DVD double-layer at that rate, spending much less than you would to buy camera cards (the lib-ray approach) On a 22 inch 1080p monitor at about 3 feet it is crystal clear. Advise recipients to back up the discs, as no writable disk is really durable, though.